Sars

In June, a formerly healthy 60-year-old man was admitted to a hospital in Jidda, Saudi Arabia. He had been sick with a fever, cough and shortness of breath for several days; in the week that followed he developed severe pneumonia and renal failure. He died 11 days after his admission to the hospital. In a report published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine , researchers revealed more about the man's illness, which was caused by a previously unknown coronavirus called HCoV-EMC. Researchers isolated the virus from mucus the patient coughed up and they sequenced its genome, discovering that it was most closely related to coronaviruses found in bats.

The Argentine writer César Aira is a master of dark and forgotten places. Like his late countryman Jorge Luis Borges, he writes narratives that feel like fables. He is the author of 80 books, most of them novellas, only a handful of which have been translated to English. At a slim 128 pages, "Shantytown" recounts a story set in a slum, or "villa miseria," as they're known in Buenos Aires. I lived within earshot of such a Buenos Aires shantytown not long after Aira originally published this novel in 1998.

Taiwanese officials said a medical researcher has tested positive for SARS, the island's first case since July. The patient is a 44-year-old man who had been studying SARS at the National Defense University, health officials said. "Right now, he's the only one who's been infected," Health Minister Chen Chien-jen said at a news conference. The researcher attended a conference in Singapore on Dec. 7 and developed a fever Dec. 10 after returning to Taiwan, officials said.

ATLANTA - In a war room of sorts in a neatly appointed government building, U.S. officers dressed in crisp uniforms arranged themselves around a U-shaped table and kept their eyes trained on a giant screen. PowerPoint slides ticked through the latest movements of an enemy that recently emerged in Saudi Arabia - a mysterious virus that has killed more than half of the people known to have been infected. Here at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, experts from the U.S. Public Health Service and their civilian counterparts have been meeting twice a week since the beginning of June to keep tabs on the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus.

Re "A Tale of Two Epidemics," letter, May 27: The letter writer who thinks the SARS epidemic may not be as important as HIV/AIDS should stop and think how each of these epidemics is spread, and then it will be obvious that SARS is far more serious. Innocent people sitting in a room, walking down the street, taking public transportation can contract SARS, while we all know that abstinence from dirty needles and unprotected sex will prevent almost all cases of HIV/AIDS. H.J. Bleecker Riverside

The World Health Organization removed Toronto from a list of areas affected by severe acute respiratory syndrome because no domestically acquired case or death had been confirmed since April 20. "This is yet another vote of confidence in Canada, showing that SARS has been controlled and that it is safe to travel to Toronto," Health Minister Anne McLellan told Parliament. SARS has claimed 24 lives in Canada since it was detected in March.

Twelve more Taiwanese have died of SARS, but the number of new infections fell to three, the government said today. New deaths from severe acute respiratory syndrome were reported for the first time in three days, pushing Taiwan's toll to 72, health officials said. Officials did not give details on the new deaths. The new infections were the lowest since the island's first hospital outbreak in April.

As it turns out, medical news is a lot like a medicine: Too much can be as serious a problem as too little -- and the wrong sort can be downright harmful. That's the persuasive case made by Caltech President David Baltimore, the Nobel Prize-winning virologist, who this week took the U.S. media to task for what he sees as its alarmist coverage of the international effort to contain severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. "Restaurants sit empty in Chinatowns.

A 12-year-old girl was in isolation at a hospital in Taipei, the capital, with SARS symptoms, health officials said. If the girl has severe acute respiratory syndrome, she will be the first case since the World Health Organization removed Taiwan from its list of SARS-infected areas three weeks ago. The girl developed a fever two days after she returned from a trip to Shanghai on July 5, officials said.

Re "SARS Virus May Be Robust," May 5: America's failure to provide its citizens with a national health-care system makes it possibly the most vulnerable nation on Earth to severe acute respiratory syndrome or a future terrorist-induced epidemic. There is no one in Vietnam, Japan or Canada who cannot go to a doctor because he or she cannot afford it. In contrast, untold millions, and rising, cannot access a health-care professional to have their feverish condition diagnosed in the U.S. This is our No. 1 homeland security problem.

The virus known as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus, or MERS -- which has so far killed 38 of the 64 people known to have been infected with it -- has been especially aggressive in Saudi Arabia, where, as of Wednesday, health officials had reported 49 cases and 32 deaths . Now a team of U.S. and Canadian scientists has teamed with Saudi health officials and others to report on how MERS spread through four hospitals in the eastern part...

BEIJING -- A new form of bird flu has infected more than a dozen people and caused six deaths in China in the last two months, according to official Chinese media reports. As of Friday, Chinese media reported 14 people were infected with the virus, a bird-borne strain of influenza known as H7N9. Six of the 14 patients lived in Shanghai, with the remaining patients from nearby provinces. Most patients reportedly worked in direct contact with birds in the poultry industry. No cases of human-to-human transmission of the virus have been reported.

In June, a formerly healthy 60-year-old man was admitted to a hospital in Jidda, Saudi Arabia. He had been sick with a fever, cough and shortness of breath for several days; in the week that followed he developed severe pneumonia and renal failure. He died 11 days after his admission to the hospital. In a report published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine , researchers revealed more about the man's illness, which was caused by a previously unknown coronavirus called HCoV-EMC. Researchers isolated the virus from mucus the patient coughed up and they sequenced its genome, discovering that it was most closely related to coronaviruses found in bats.

In the face of privacy concerns, the Los Angeles Police Department has agreed to change the way it collects information on suspicious activity possibly related to terrorism. The department, after coming under fire from civil liberties and community groups, will no longer hold on to so-called suspicious activity reports that the LAPD's counter-terrorism unit determines are about harmless incidents. Until now, the department stored the innocuous reports in a database for a year.

November 1, 2009 | Richard Steven Street, Street is the author, most recently, of "Everyone Had Cameras: Photography and Farmworkers in California, 1850-2000," the third volume in his history of California farmworkers.

September 30, 2009 | Nina Hachigian, Nina Hachigian, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, is the coauthor of "The Next American Century: How the U.S. Can Thrive as Other Powers Rise."

What better way to celebrate a birthday than to take to the world stage? Last week, Hu Jintao became the first Chinese president to address the U.N. General Assembly, a privilege seemingly reserved for the president of the United States and colorful despots such as Moammar Kadafi. The People's Republic, which turns 60 on Thursday, has evolved from tin-pot polity to powerhouse. And among the spectacular transformations China has undergone, its dramatic turnabout in how it relates to the world stands out. China began as a pariah state, rejected by and immensely hostile toward the world community.

China has approved human trials of an experimental SARS vaccine, and 30 people have already volunteered to be test subjects, state media reported. Researchers cautioned that the trials would not mean the vaccine could be produced for widespread use any time soon, China Central Television said. China has said the vaccine is made from a dead virus linked to severe acute respiratory syndrome. It said the vaccine was effective in animal tests.

Chinese authorities tracked down Westwood resident Mike Su recently at a networking banquet in Beijing. They forced him to pack his bags, then whisked him away to a budget hotel on the edge of the city where they detained him for a week. Su's crime? On his flight from Los Angeles, the website director had the misfortune of sitting near someone who had allegedly contracted the H1N1 flu. "I felt like I was going to prison," said Su, 33.

As she approached the immigration counter at Beijing's international airport at 7 a.m. Sunday, bleary-eyed after flying all night from Bali, Lucia Rocio heard the agitated whispering of the Chinese officials. Mexican passport. Mexican passport. Rocio was pulled out of line and taken to a small room where she was given a mask and a thermometer, which she dared not put in her mouth because it appeared to be unsterilized.